House

Click n bank�Jesse regan

2011-01-03T04:20:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

HOW IMPACT WOODLAND HOME

You are looking at pictures of a house I built for our family in Wales. It was built by myself and my father in law with help from passers by and visiting friends. 4 months after starting we were moved in and cosy. I estimate 1000-1500 man hours and £3000 put in to this point. Not really so much in house buying terms (roughly £60/sq m excluding labour).

The house was built with maximum regard for the environment and by reciprocation gives us a unique opportunity to live close to nature. Being your own (have a go) architect is a lot of fun and allows you to create and enjoy something which is part of yourself and the land rather than, at worst, a mass produced box designed for maximum profit and convenience of the construction industry. Building from natural materials does away with producers profits and the cocktail of carcinogenic poisons that fill most modern buildings.

Some key points of the design and construction:

Dug into hillside for low visual impact and shelter
Stone and mud from diggings used for retaining walls, foundations etc.
Frame of oak thinnings (spare wood) from surrounding woodland
Reciprocal roof rafters are structurally and aesthaetically fantastic and very easy to do
Straw bales in floor, walls and roof for super-insulation and easy building
Plastic sheet and mud/turf roof for low impact and ease
Lime plaster on walls is breathable and low energy to manufacture (compared to cement)
Reclaimed (scrap) wood for floors and fittings
Anything you could possibly want is in a rubbish pile somewhere (windows, burner, plumbing, wiring...)
Woodburner for heating - renewable and locally plentiful
Flue goes through big stone/plaster lump to retain and slowly release heat
Fridge is cooled by air coming underground through foundations
Skylight in roof lets in natural feeling light
Solar panels for lighting, music and computing
Water by gravity from nearby spring
Compost toilet
Roof water collects in pond for garden etc.

Main tools used: chainsaw, hammer and 1 inch chisel, little else really. Oh and by the way I am not a builder or carpenter, my experience is only having a go at one similar house 2yrs before and a bit of mucking around inbetween. This kind of building is accessible to anyone. My main relevant skills were being able bodied, having self belief and perseverence and a mate or two to give a lift now and again.

This building is one part of a low-impact or permaculture approach to life. This sort of life is about living in harmony with both the natural world and ourselves, doing things simply and using appropriate levels of technology. These sort of low cost, natural buildings have a place not only in their own sustainability, but also in their potential to provide affordable housing which allows people access to land and the opportunity to lead more simple, sustainable lives. For example this house was made to house our family whilst we worked in the woodland surrounding the house doing ecological woodland management and setting up a forest garden, things that would have been impossible had we had to pay a regular rent or mortgage. To read more about why we did it and why this is an important option to meet the challenges of climate change and peak oil.

Would you like to learn more about this sort of building and gain practical experience? Why not join us on another exciting building project. There will be opportunities for everyone of all abilities and areas of interest. Click here for more details.

Want To See More?

Plans of the house

How we did it

Why we did it

The family's perspective

The NEW HOUSE we're working on now!

Source:

http://www.simondale.net/house/

THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR

A Movie a Day, Day 92: Eat Pray Love and Cairo Time

by Elise Nakhnikian on August 16th, 2010 at 7:08 pm in Film

This has been a good summer for something we haven’t seen much in the movies: the female midlife crisis. (Could this be the next wave of Baby Boomer self-analysis?) Here’s what I wrote today for TimeOFF about two of the latest, Eat Pray Love and Cairo Time.

Elise Nakhnikian has been writing about movies since the best way to learn about them was through alternative weeklies. She is currently the movie reviewer for TimeOFF. She also has her own blog, Girls Can Play, and a Twitter account.
Tags: A Movie a Day, Cairo Time, Eat Pray Love, Julia Roberts, Patricia Clarkson

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Corrida: Michael Atkinson's Hemingway Cutthroat

by Richard McDonough on August 16th, 2010 at 6:10 pm in Books

It seemed like a really "fun" conceit: Hemingway as a detective figure in a series of novels. I missed the first book in this series so I started cold. Good sign; Thomas Dunne, a good editor at St. Martin's, its sponsor. He has done some nice books. Then I read the book.

Let me start with a caveat. (You were expecting caviar canapes? Not in this economy!) I thought the writer of the tattooed lady trilogy, that dead Scandinavian fellow, was wretched. He had a great character (she of the tattoo), and yet he left her out of the first book for far too long a time, a time that nearly made me lose patience with the whole. And then he wrote far too long for the message he was carrying in his damaged psyche. But that is another story for another time. Needless to say, he laughed all the way to the grave, though his putative widow was buggered by the state. Back to our boy.

This book is a mess. Hemingway, had he the energy, and I doubt he would, given his disgust for life, would roll over in his grave, or urn, or whatever. First is the prose. Perhaps for you it is the story, but for good or bad, for me it is the prose.
Tags: Ernest Hemingway, Hemingway Cutthroat, Michael Atkinson, Minotaur Books, The Sun Also Rises, Thomas Dunne

The Conversations: Todd Haynes

by Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard on August 16th, 2010 at 12:30 am in Film

[Editor's Note: The Conversations is a monthly feature in which Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard discuss a wide range of cinematic subjects: critical analyses of films, filmmaker overviews, and more. Readers should expect to encounter spoilers.]

Ed Howard: In all of his films, Todd Haynes takes elements of gaudy tabloid culture and warps them to his own purposes, because he sees—in the lurid stories about sexuality and decadence and violence that we like to tell ourselves, in the celebrity gossip rags and TV news and hyped-up movies—deeper truths about identity, gender, politics, entertainment and sexuality. Haynes finds, within the sensationalist and the melodramatic, a culture's vision of itself, distorted by a funhouse mirror but nevertheless evocative of the unvarnished truth. Or maybe the truth really is as strange as the mirror suggests: entertainers as plastic action figures, made to be manipulated and posed; sexuality as a plague, terrifying and mysterious; suburbia as a deadening cage for the emotions; the past as a manufactured façade, rendered superficially safe by the suppression (or ignorance) of all those impulses that go unchecked in the present; identity as malleable and fluid, the true self supplanted by endless masks and games. Haynes' appropriation of the language of media—the docudrama, the genre film, the educational documentary, all eras and styles collaged together in his cinematic blender—is an examination of the ways in which culture both disguises and probes the truths about individuals, their secret desires and fears and fantasies.

Tags: Dottie Gets Spanked, Far From Heaven, I'm Not There, Poison, Safe, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, The Conversations, Todd Haynes, Velvet Goldmine

A Movie a Day, Day 91: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

by Elise Nakhnikian on August 15th, 2010 at 5:43 pm in Film

If Inception is a video game that becomes interactive only after it’s over, when you compare notes with other fans, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a video game you watch someone else play. That might not sound like much fun, but this movie is an upper, thanks to its inventive video game/cartoon visuals, crisp editing and constant stream of wry observational barbs.

Director Edgar Wright found his own way to animate the black-and-white graphic novels his movie is based on, adding bright colors but keeping a comic-book look. Figures are frequently silhouetted or shot in very bright or dark lighting, and cartoonish graphics often pop up on the screen, like the “Yeah Yeah Yeahs” and lightning bolts that emanate from Scott’s band when they play; the pink hearts that float up from their lips as he kisses Ramona, the girl of his dreams; and the way the snow melts in Ramona’s wake as she rollerblades down Toronto sidewalks. The dreamlike editing helps too, as characters move from one setting to another without comment or cuts, the conversation or background music simply continuing as the background changes.

Tags: A Movie a Day, Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Powers, Edgar Wright, Ellen Wong, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michael Cera, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

2010 Primetime Emmy Winner Predictions

by Ed Gonzalez on August 15th, 2010 at 1:59 pm in Television

On August 29, Betty White will win her seventh Emmy, Neil Patrick Harris will likely win his first, and I will suffer a stroke if 30 Rock wins its fourth Outstanding Comedy Series trophy. Of course, now that Barack Obama is president and Tina Fey is no longer required to stump for him on SNL as Sarah Palin, will Emmy finally and mercifully annul its relationship to 30 Rock, the most seizure-inducing show on television since Mary Hart? If so, which show among the six nominees for Outstanding Comedy Series is the Alice that stands to slay Fey's Jabberwocky—nominated for a measly 15 awards this year after setting the all-time record last year with 22? And what about Mad Men? The most dapper, zeitgeist-y, cinephile-pleasing program of our post-Sopranos generation, Mad Men has won the Outstanding Drama Series prize two years in a row, but is it time to finally give it to the other, superior AMC drama in this category for, not least of which, refusing to wear its themes so transparently on its manicured sleeves? Because it's impossible to tell just how much an Emmy voter takes into account a whole season's achievements (or lack thereof) when filling out their ballot, and how much they base their picks off of the individually submitted episodes, your guesses are as good as mine, which I offer below—not so humbly and with more than a dash of wish-fulfillment—two weeks before the big night.
Tags: 30 Rock, Breaking Bad, Bryan Cranston, Elizabeth Moss, Emmy Awards, Glee, Jane Lynch, Jim Parsons, Mad Men, Modern Family, Neil Patrick Harris, Nurse Jackie, Tina Fey

Uma Jornada Maravilhosa: Carlos Roberto de Sousa and Silent Cinema in Brazil

by Aaron Cutler on August 15th, 2010 at 9:39 am in Interviews

The Jornada Brasileira de Cinema Silencioso, just completing its fourth year, is one of the world's most prominent silent film festivals. Running from August 6–15 at São Paulo's Cinemateca Brasileira, it included films from Brazil, America and Germany, with titles by Raoul Walsh, Victor Fleming and G.W. Pabst. In previous years the festival spotlighted German, French and Japanese archives; this year the focus shifted to Sweden, with a chance to see some Greta Garbo silents and a screening of the cult horror film Häxan on Friday the 13th. I spoke to Carlos Roberto de Sousa, the series curator, to learn more.
Tags: Carlos Roberto de Sousa, Cinemateca Brasileira, Humberto Mauro, Joris Ivens, Jornada Brasileira de Cinema Silencioso

Mad Men Spoilers: Season 5, Episode 2, "Little Feet"

by Matthew Phelan on August 15th, 2010 at 8:38 am in Comics

Matthew D. Phelan is a cartoonist and writer based in the United States. His work has appeared in Chemical Engineering, Anthem, and The Onion.
Tags: Christina Hendricks, Elisabeth Moss, Mad Men, Mark Moses

A Movie a Day, Day 90: I Vitelloni

by Elise Nakhnikian on August 14th, 2010 at 11:06 pm in Film

"Here's the question: Is 'I Vitelloni' the work of an artist whose vision is just flowering—or that of an artist whose vision has fully ripened and is about to decay? I can't decide," wrote Mick LaSalle in the San Francisco Chronicle.

That's an interesting way to look at it, but I see Federico Fellini's career more as a sine wave than an arc or a slow and steady ripening. Whatever drew Fellini to Jungian psychology, séances, psychedelics, and circuses made some of his movies too stagily fantastic for my tastes (Satyricon), while others are bathetically sentimental (La Strada, Nights of Cabiria) or both (Juliet of the Spirits). But studded throughout his career are masterpieces like 1973's Amarcord, 1963's 8 1/2, and 1953's I Vitelloni, which use Fellini's trademark mix of realism and fantasy with restraint, evoking a time and place and state of mind with exquisite precision.
Tags: Federico Fellini, Franco Fabrizi, I Vitelloni, Nino Rota

A Movie a Day, Day 89: His Girl Friday

by Elise Nakhnikian on August 13th, 2010 at 5:26 pm in Film

I hate to be asked what my favorite movie is (how can you pick just one when there are so many great films, which you love for so many different reasons?), but I was asked in an interview a few years ago, so I had to come up with an answer. The one I eventually came up with—His Girl Friday—is still what I'd say if anyone asked. Other movies (not a lot, but some) may be as wonderful as Howard Hawks's brilliant adaptation of The Front Page, but I don't think any others mean quite as much to me personally. So I watched it again this morning, as I have every couple of years since I first saw it in a revival theater in Austin.
Tags: A Movie a Day, Ben Hecht, Billy Gilbert, Cary Grant, Charles Lederer, Charles MacArthur, His Girl Friday, Howard Hawks, Rosalind Russell

A Movie a Day, Day 88: Quest for Honor

by Elise Nakhnikian on August 12th, 2010 at 7:58 pm in Film

Yesterday's movie was Quest for Honor, a documentary about the practice of people killing their own wives, daughters, and sisters for bringing shame on their families. As a title card at the end reminds us, these "honor" killings happen around the world, but the focus of this scrappy documentary is Kurdistan.

At its core is a real-life murder mystery that's being investigated by the director of a women's center, a former teacher named Runak Faraj, and Kalthoum, the young woman who works with her. A vivid picture of the area and its deep-rooted tradition of honor killings emerges as Runak and Kalthoum talk to police and to relatives and in-laws of the murdered woman, Nesrin—about how and why she was killed. Most of the people interviewed are surprisingly candid, the husband's family as much as admitting their guilt even as they deny it. (Nesrin was shot point blank by some of her in-laws for the sin of seeing other men, even though her husband was deceased.)
Tags: A Movie a Day, Mary Ann Smothers Bruni, Quest for Honor

Abraham Lincoln's Big Gay Dance Party at Theatre Row

by Jason Clark on August 11th, 2010 at 7:00 pm in Theater

The question you might find dancing in your head while watching Abraham Lincoln's Big Gay Dance Party—a livelier title than show, to be sure—isn't why it landed a prime locale in the current off-Broadway season, but how it even got into last year's New York International Fringe Festival to begin with. This is not meant to be a patent insult (well, okay, maybe a little), but really a query as to how such a preachy tract with a gimmick wowed the nudity-starved, thrill-seeking Fringers. Judging by the production mounted right now, it's about as edgy as the Fred and Daphne segments of Scooby-Doo. And the clothes aren't even as cool.

Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's Big Gay Dance Party, Rashomon, The Norman Conquests, Theatre Row, Vince Pesce

A Movie a Day, Day 87: Vengeance

by Elise Nakhnikian on August 11th, 2010 at 6:46 pm in Film

"What does revenge mean when you've forgotten everything?" asks one of the triad hit men enlisted by Costello (Johnny Hallyday), a retired French gangster, to avenge the slaughter of his daughter's family in Macao. That question is never answered, making the subplot about Costello's failing memory feel more like a gimmick than a theme: This isn't a film that inspires deep thought. But the camerawork, the lighting, the colors, and especially the carefully choreographed dances of death are so good they make Vengeance worth watching.

Johnny To's trademark standoffs are the best thing about Vengeance, which came out last year after premiering at Cannes and has just been released in the U.S. (It's available only on IFC's Movies on Demand channel.) Often slowed down, underlit, and color-saturated to increase the drama, his gun battles generally start by dramatizing the conflict with a vivid scene or image and end with hard guys in close quarters, blasting the crap out of each other. The one that will probably stick with me longest from Vengeance starts at a picnic ground where Costello and his crew have tracked down the men they are hunting. Finding their targets with their wives and kids, our guys settle into a neighboring table and wait for the families to leave. The other men know why they're there, but their families have no idea. Then a colorful boomerang floats into view, travelling to Costello's table from the table they're watching and back again. It's a beautiful sight and a powerful symbol, making visible the link between the two tables while reminding us of the child who threw it, whose carefree world is about to explode.

Tags: A Movie a Day, Jean-Pierre Melville, Johnny Hallyday, Johnny To, Vengeance

Christopher Nolan: What Are We Watching, Exactly?

by Tom Elrod on August 11th, 2010 at 7:00 am in Film

"The mob has plans, the cops have plans, Gordon's got plans. You know, they're schemers. Schemers trying to control their little worlds." —The Joker

Christopher Nolan is an artist. Just what kind of artist, and how much we should praise him for it, is another matter. No matter what anyone may say, he is no Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick's films, despite their objectivity and reputation for coldness, were studies of characters. Nolan's films, by contrast, are studies of plot. Indeed, you could say he's an artist of plot.

This is both his great strength and great weakness. There is much to be frustrated about with his oeuvre: his incoherent action sequences, the endless Hans Zimmer percussion compositions, and his apparent inability to not kill his female characters. But there is no denying the extreme popularity of his films, both in box office grosses and the passion of fans. Indeed, the intense love of Nolan on the Internet is something both frightening and fascinating. Jim Emerson gives the summary of the brouhaha over Nolan's latest film, Inception (see also Dennis Cozzalio and Roger Ebert). Essentially, a vocal group of fans believes it is wrong and ridiculous to suspect that Nolan is anything less than a genius.
Tags: Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan, Following, Hans Zimmer, Inception, Insomnia, Memento, The Dark Knight, The Prestige

A Movie a Day, Day 86: Airplane!

by Elise Nakhnikian on August 10th, 2010 at 8:05 pm in Film

There have been so many movie parodies by now that the genre is probably ripe for a parody of its own, yet nobody's done it better than the granddaddy of them all, Airplane!. A Marx Brothers farce wrapped around an Arthur Hailey melodrama and given a couple of whirls in the blender, Airplane! celebrated its 30th birthday last night with a showing at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which was followed by a Q&A with the gracefully aging ZAZ boyz (Jerry and David Zucker and Jim Abrahams) who cooked it up.

The first hour or so of Airplane! is so crowded with laughs that it had me crying, though there may be a little too much dead air in the last third or so, when traumatized pilot Ted Striker and his sweet stewardess girlfriend Elaine are landing the plane. (The directors acknowledged as much when someone asked if they'd been approached to do the sequel. Yes, Abrahams said, but they'd run out of airplane jokes by then. "Ran out of them by the second half of the movie, actually," said David Zucker.)
Tags: A Movie a Day, Airplane!, David Zucker, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams

Mad Men, Season 4, Episode 3, “The Good News”

by Luke de Smet on August 10th, 2010 at 10:47 am in Television

The 1960s California of Mad Men is seemingly a vibrant and relaxing place where someone like Dick Whitman can go and take it easy, leaving his Don Draper (Jon Hamm) alter-ego behind in New York. The highways are open, the girls are liberated and endlessly precocious, and Dick looks just as good painting in his boxers as Don Draper ever has wearing his suits and sipping his Old Fashioneds.

This week's Mad Men episode, "The Good News" (written by Jonathan Abrahams and Matthew Weiner, and directed by Jennifer Getzinger), brings Don back to Anna Draper (Melinda Page Hamilton), the widow of the man whose identity Don stole, for the first time since season two. For half the episode Don is referred to solely by his real name, Dick Whitman, and we see him casually dressed and largely carefree, smoking pot and hitting on a teenager for seemingly no reason other than that he feels young. These trips to visit Anna are a strange sort of return home for Don, allowing him to lay down his guard and regenerate, and to reconnect with the man he once was. Anna provides Don with both a connection to his past and atonement for his present-day sins. Continue Reading
Tags: Christina Hendricks, Gerald Downey, January Jones, Jennifer Getzinger, Jon Hamm, Jonathan Abrahams, Mad Men, Matthew Weiner, Melinda Page Hamilton

Source:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/

Sangam house

Sangam house is an international writer's residency program that brings together writers from across the world to live and work among their peers in a safe, supportive and nurturing space.

…a bunch of open-minded people gathered to exchange thoughts and ideas on a high contemporary and international level.

- Xaver Bayer

Every winter the Sangam House invites approximately twenty writers to live and work at an arts institution in southern India. Each year, half the invited writers come from the South Asian subcontinent (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Bhutan, Nepal, and Sri Lanka) and half from other countries around the world. Sangam House is open to writers in all languages and disciplines - we welcome fiction and non-fiction writers, poets, translators, playwrights and screen-writers.

The Sangam House season usually runs for about 10 weeks between November and February. Individual residence periods are determined by writers' needs and available resources (though we recommend a residency period of no less than 2 weeks). A Sangam House invitation means that board and lodge are covered for the duration of the writer's stay with us.

Source:

http://www.sangamhouse.org/

Monday, August 16, 2010

Image House


Energy Efficient House 699 × 737 - 143k - jpg	Gibson House 350 × 310 - 46k - jpg	Our House Plans 525 × 369 - 223k - jpg	House 400 × 327 - 24k - jpg

Emily Murphy House 300 × 300 - 50k - jpg	HOUSE CARE 550 × 360 - 56k - jpg	of our new house. 1024 × 768 - 316k - jpg	house image 458 × 447 - 25k - gif

cutaway house 480 × 356 - 37k - jpg	Schröder-Schräder House 521 × 373 - 71k - jpg	Towner House 640 × 426 - 69k - jpg	White House Picture 780 × 522 - 83k - jpg

Frederick Douglass House. 640 × 514 - 74k - php	house 400 × 320 - 46k - jpg	House oracles here. 400 × 300 - 72k - jpg	Southdown Plantation House 400 × 314 - 26k - jpg

House 3 description 640× 501 - 92k - jpg	Tales From Turnpike House 500 × 500 - 68k - jpg	The White House 800 × 450 - 121k - jpg	Schröder-Schräder House 513 × 395 - 56k - jpg

Source: http://www.google.co.in/images?hl=en&q=house&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=4R5pTOKlJpLOuAPg0KH-Aw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQsAQwAA

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HOW IMPACT WOODLAND HOME

2010-08-17T01:41:00.000-07:00

Some key points of the design and construction:

Dug into hillside for low visual impact and shelter
Stone and mud from diggings used for retaining walls, foundations etc.
Frame of oak thinnings (spare wood) from surrounding woodland
Reciprocal roof rafters are structurally and aesthaetically fantastic and very easy to do
Straw bales in floor, walls and roof for super-insulation and easy building
Plastic sheet and mud/turf roof for low impact and ease
Lime plaster on walls is breathable and low energy to manufacture (compared to cement)
Reclaimed (scrap) wood for floors and fittings
Anything you could possibly want is in a rubbish pile somewhere (windows, burner, plumbing, wiring...)
Woodburner for heating - renewable and locally plentiful
Flue goes through big stone/plaster lump to retain and slowly release heat
Fridge is cooled by air coming underground through foundations
Skylight in roof lets in natural feeling light
Solar panels for lighting, music and computing
Water by gravity from nearby spring
Compost toilet
Roof water collects in pond for garden etc.

Want To See More?

Plans of the house

How we did it

Why we did it

The family's perspective

The NEW HOUSE we're working on now!

Source:

http://www.simondale.net/house/

THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR

2010-08-17T00:28:00.000-07:00

A Movie a Day, Day 92: Eat Pray Love and Cairo Time

by Elise Nakhnikian on August 16th, 2010 at 7:08 pm in Film

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Corrida: Michael Atkinson's Hemingway Cutthroat

by Richard McDonough on August 16th, 2010 at 6:10 pm in Books

The Conversations: Todd Haynes

by Jason Bellamy and Ed Howard on August 16th, 2010 at 12:30 am in Film

Tags: Dottie Gets Spanked, Far From Heaven, I'm Not There, Poison, Safe, Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, The Conversations, Todd Haynes, Velvet Goldmine

A Movie a Day, Day 91: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

by Elise Nakhnikian on August 15th, 2010 at 5:43 pm in Film

Tags: A Movie a Day, Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Powers, Edgar Wright, Ellen Wong, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Michael Cera, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

2010 Primetime Emmy Winner Predictions

by Ed Gonzalez on August 15th, 2010 at 1:59 pm in Television

Uma Jornada Maravilhosa: Carlos Roberto de Sousa and Silent Cinema in Brazil

by Aaron Cutler on August 15th, 2010 at 9:39 am in Interviews

Mad Men Spoilers: Season 5, Episode 2, "Little Feet"

by Matthew Phelan on August 15th, 2010 at 8:38 am in Comics

A Movie a Day, Day 90: I Vitelloni

by Elise Nakhnikian on August 14th, 2010 at 11:06 pm in Film

A Movie a Day, Day 89: His Girl Friday

by Elise Nakhnikian on August 13th, 2010 at 5:26 pm in Film

A Movie a Day, Day 88: Quest for Honor

by Elise Nakhnikian on August 12th, 2010 at 7:58 pm in Film

Abraham Lincoln's Big Gay Dance Party at Theatre Row

by Jason Clark on August 11th, 2010 at 7:00 pm in Theater

A Movie a Day, Day 87: Vengeance

by Elise Nakhnikian on August 11th, 2010 at 6:46 pm in Film

Christopher Nolan: What Are We Watching, Exactly?

by Tom Elrod on August 11th, 2010 at 7:00 am in Film

"The mob has plans, the cops have plans, Gordon's got plans. You know, they're schemers. Schemers trying to control their little worlds." —The Joker

A Movie a Day, Day 86: Airplane!

by Elise Nakhnikian on August 10th, 2010 at 8:05 pm in Film

Mad Men, Season 4, Episode 3, “The Good News”

by Luke de Smet on August 10th, 2010 at 10:47 am in Television

Source:

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/

Sangam house

2010-08-17T00:14:00.000-07:00

Sangam house is an international writer's residency program that brings together writers from across the world to live and work among their peers in a safe, supportive and nurturing space.

…a bunch of open-minded people gathered to exchange thoughts and ideas on a high contemporary and international level.

- Xaver Bayer

Source:

http://www.sangamhouse.org/

Image House

2010-08-16T04:19:00.000-07:00


Energy Efficient House 699 × 737 - 143k - jpg	Gibson House 350 × 310 - 46k - jpg	Our House Plans 525 × 369 - 223k - jpg	House 400 × 327 - 24k - jpg

Emily Murphy House 300 × 300 - 50k - jpg	HOUSE CARE 550 × 360 - 56k - jpg	of our new house. 1024 × 768 - 316k - jpg	house image 458 × 447 - 25k - gif

cutaway house 480 × 356 - 37k - jpg	Schröder-Schräder House 521 × 373 - 71k - jpg	Towner House 640 × 426 - 69k - jpg	White House Picture 780 × 522 - 83k - jpg

Frederick Douglass House. 640 × 514 - 74k - php	house 400 × 320 - 46k - jpg	House oracles here. 400 × 300 - 72k - jpg	Southdown Plantation House 400 × 314 - 26k - jpg

House 3 description 640× 501 - 92k - jpg	Tales From Turnpike House 500 × 500 - 68k - jpg	The White House 800 × 450 - 121k - jpg	Schröder-Schräder House 513 × 395 - 56k - jpg

Source: http://www.google.co.in/images?hl=en&q=house&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=univ&ei=4R5pTOKlJpLOuAPg0KH-Aw&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQsAQwAA

Architectural Home Plans...

2010-08-16T04:01:00.000-07:00

Architectural Home Plans...

Architect Home Plan provides cad drafting services to owner-builders, architects, engineers and contractors. Residential and commercial projects, from design stage to finished working drawings. Let us give you a quote on your project to provide you with working drawings or residential permit drawings. We supply architectural cad drafting to homeowners, contractors, Architects and Engineers nationwide. Our hourly rate of $30/hr is a bargain, let us help you get your drawings out for submittal.

Custom House Plans

You want your house plans to include all the great design ideas and layouts you have seen in your life. You know the way it should look in your mind, but when it comes to putting all the pieces together it doesn't seem to work. Call us to get your custom home plan design drawn properly. I will take your plan and elevation ideas and turn them into your own vision of what you want your home to be. We provide people a chance to work with an Architect at an affordable rate, taking your ideas and developing them into a complete set of plans that you can give your builder, as well as get your building permit.

Custom Home Plans

Custom House Plans are just that- custom- made to order, customized to meet your needs and wishes. Its not something ready made that you buy off the shelf. We work with your sketches, pictures and images to come up with an individualized " made to fit" plan that does all you need it to. I have put some samples of past projects up in the gallery mainly to show that we offer a full building set, not just plans and elevations. We will work with you to get a set of plans that you can take to get a building permit in your jurisdiction.

Source:http://floorplans.miingo.com/?gclid=COnijvXsvaMCFdRA6wodrl35aQ

Home Design Exhibition

2010-08-16T03:30:00.000-07:00

Decorating your home ?

Look4design helps you find your perfect House Design.

At Look4Design you can enjoy a wide variety of manufacturers in the area of Home Decoration and Interior Design.

Look4design presents hundreds of beautiful Kitchens, designed Furniture, artistic Flooring solutions, a rich collection of Doors and Windows and everything you need to build the house you dreamed about.

The presenters in Look4design are carefully selected and must comply with the highest quality design standards.

Source:

http://www.look4design.co.nz/?gclid=COy96pbovaMCFcRA6wod41RnaA

House

2010-08-16T02:15:00.000-07:00

For other uses, see House (disambiguation).

A ranch style house in Salinas, California, United States

Example of an early Victorian "Gingerbread House" in the United States, built in 1855

A Yurt near the Gurvan Saikhan Mountains (in the background); part of Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park.

A house is a home, shelter, building or structure that is a dwelling or place for habitation by human beings. The term includes many kinds of dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to free standing individual structures. In some contexts, "house" may mean the same as dwelling, residence, home, abode, lodging, accommodation, or housing, among other meanings. The social unit that lives in a house is known as a household. Most commonly, a household is a family unit of some kind, though households can be other social groups, such as single persons, or groups of unrelated individuals. Settled agrarian and industrial societies are composed of household units living permanently in housing of various types, according to a variety of forms of land tenure. English-speaking people generally call any building they routinely occupy "home". Many people leave their houses during the day for work and recreation, and return to them to sleep or for other activities.

History

The English word house is derived from the proto-Germanic hud-dos, thought possibly to be a derivative of the verbal root hûd ‘to hide’ (see OED, s.v. house). Terms in other languages show varying derivations.

The oldest house in the world is approximately from 10,000 BC and was made of mammoth bones, found at Mezhirich near Kiev in Ukraine. It was probably covered with mammoth hides. The house was discovered in 1965 by a farmer digging a new basement six feet below the ground.

Architect Norbert Schoenauer, in his book 6,000 Years of Housing, identifies three major categories of types of housing: the "Pre-Urban" house, the "Oriental Urban" house, and the "Occidental Urban" house.

Types of Pre-Urban houses include temporary dwellings such as the Inuit igloo, semi-permanent dwellings such as the pueblo, and permanent dwellings such as the New England homestead.

"Oriental Urban" houses include houses of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and traditional urban houses in China, India, and Islamic cities.

"Occidental Urban" houses include medieval urban houses, the Renaissance town house, and the houses, tenements and apartments of the 19th and 20th centuries. Houses of that time were generally made of simple and raw materials (rocks, sticks, woven cloth, etc.)

Types

Structure

Wooden chalets in the Swiss Alps, Switzerland.

The developed world in general features three basic types of house that have their own ground-level entry and private open space, and usually on a separately titled parcel of land:

Single-family detached houses – free-standing on all sides.
Semi-detached houses (duplexes) – houses that are attached, usually to only one other house via a party wall.
Terraced house (UK), also known as a row house or townhouse – attached to other houses, possibly in a row, each separated by a party wall.

In addition, there are various forms of attached housing where a number of dwelling units are co-located within the same structure, which share a ground-level entry and may or may not have any private open space, such as apartments (a.k.a. flats) of various scales. Another type of housing is movable, such as houseboats, caravans, and trailer homes.

In the United Kingdom, 27% of the population live in terraced houses and 32% in semi-detached houses, as of 2002. In the United States as of 2000, 61.4% of people live in detached houses and 5.6% in semi-detached houses, 26% in row houses or apartments, and 7% in mobile homes.

Function

A Nalukettu traditional Kerala house in India

Some houses transcend the basic functionality of providing "a roof over one's head" or of serving as a family "hearth and home". When a house becomes a display-case for wealth and/or fashion and/or conspicuous consumption, we may speak of a "great house". The residence of a feudal lord or of a ruler may require defensive structures and thus turn into a fort or a castle. The house of a monarch may come to house courtiers and officers as well as the royal family: this sort of house may become a palace. Moreover, in time the lord or monarch may wish to retreat to a more personal or simple space such as a villa, a hunting lodge or a dacha. Compare the popularity of the holiday house or cottage, also known as a crib.

In contrast to a relatively upper class or modern trend to ownership of multiple houses, much of human history shows the importance of multi-purpose houses. Thus the house long served as the traditional place of work (the original cottage industry site or "in-house" small-scale manufacturing workshop) or of commerce (featuring, for example, a ground floor "shop-front" shop or counter or office, with living space above). During the Industrial Revolution there was a separation of manufacturing and banking from the house, though to this day some shopkeepers continue (or have returned) to live "over the shop".

Inside the house

Layout

Traditional house in southern Brazil.

Main article: House plan

Ideally, architects of houses design rooms to meet the needs of the people who will live in the house. Such designing, known as "interior design", has become a popular subject in universities. Feng shui, originally a Chinese method of situating houses according to such factors as sunlight and micro-climates, has recently expanded its scope to address the design of interior spaces with a view to promoting harmonious effects on the people living inside the house. Feng shui can also mean the "aura" in or around a dwelling. Compare the real-estate sales concept of "indoor-outdoor flow".

The square footage of a house in the United States reports the area of "living space", excluding the garage and other non-living spaces. The "square metres" figure of a house in Europe reports the area of the walls enclosing the home, and thus includes any attached garage and non-living spaces.

Parts

Floor plan of a "foursquare" house

Many houses have several rooms with specialized functions. These may include a living/eating area, a sleeping area, and (if suitable facilities and services exist) washing and lavatory areas. In traditional agriculture-oriented societies, domestic animals such as chickens or larger livestock (like cattle) often share part of the house with human beings. Most conventional modern houses will at least contain a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen (or kitchen area), and a living room. A typical "foursquare house" (as pictured) occurred commonly in the early history of the United States of America where they were mainly built, with a staircase in the center of the house, surrounded by four rooms, and connected to other sections of the house (including in more recent eras a garage).

The names of parts of a house often echo the names of parts of other buildings, but could typically include:

Atrium
Attic
Alcove
Basement/cellar
Bathroom (in various senses of the word)

Bath/shower
Toilet

Bedroom (or nursery, for infants or small children)
Box-room / storage room
Conservatory
Dining room
Family room or den

Fireplace (for warmth during winter; generally not found in warmer climates)

Foyer
Front room (in various senses of the phrase)
Garage
Hallway / passage / Vestibule

Hearth – often an important symbolic focus of family togetherness
Kitchen
Larder
Laundry room
Library
Living room
Loft
Nook
Window
Office or study
Pantry
Parlour
Pew/porch
Recreation room / rumpus room / television room
Shrines to serve the religious functions associated with a family
Stairwell
Sunroom
Workshop

Some houses have a pool in the background, or a trampoline, or a playground.

Construction

The structure of the house (under demolition). This house is constructed from bricks and wood and was later covered by insulating panels. The roof construction is also seen.

In the United States, modern house-construction techniques include light-frame construction (in areas with access to supplies of wood) and adobe or sometimes rammed-earth construction (in arid regions with scarce wood-resources). Some areas use brick almost exclusively, and quarried stone has long provided walling. To some extent, aluminum and steel have displaced some traditional building materials. Increasingly popular alternative construction materials include insulating concrete forms (foam forms filled with concrete), structural insulated panels (foam panels faced with oriented strand board or fiber cement), and light-gauge steel framing and heavy-gauge steel framing.

The Saitta House, Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, New York, United States built in 1899 is made of and decorated in wood.

More generally, people often build houses out of the nearest available material, and often tradition and/or culture govern construction-materials, so whole towns, areas, counties or even states/countries may be built out of one main type of material. For example, a large fraction of American houses use wood, while most British and many European houses utilize stone or brick.

In the 1900s, some house designers started using prefabrication. Sears, Roebuck & Co. first marketed their Sears Catalog Homes to the general public in 1908. Prefab techniques became popular after World War II. First small inside rooms framing, then later, whole walls were prefabricated and carried to the construction site. The original impetus was to use the labor force inside a shelter during inclement weather. More recently builders have begun to collaborate with structural engineers who use computers and finite element analysis to design prefabricated steel-framed homes with known resistance to high wind-loads and seismic forces. These newer products provide labor savings, more consistent quality, and possibly accelerated construction processes.

Lesser-used construction methods have gained (or regained) popularity in recent years. Though not in wide use, these methods frequently appeal to homeowners who may become actively involved in the construction process. They include:

Cannabrick construction
Cordwood construction
Geodesic domes
Straw-bale construction
Wattle and daub

Thermographic comparison of traditional (left) and "passivhaus" (right) buildings

Energy-efficiency

In the developed world, energy-conservation has grown in importance in house-design. Housing produces a major proportion of carbon emissions (30% of the total in the UK, for example).^{[citation needed]}

Development of a number of low-energy building types and techniques continues. They include the zero-energy house, the passive solar house, the autonomous buildings, the superinsulated and houses built to the Passivhaus standard.

Earthquake protection

One tool of earthquake engineering is base isolation which is increasingly used for earthquake protection. Base isolation is a collection of structural elements of a building that should substantially decouple it from the shaking ground thus protecting the building's integrity and enhancing its seismic performance. This technology, which is a kind of seismic vibration control, can be applied both to a newly designed building and to seismic upgrading of existing structures.

Normally, excavations are made around the building and the building is separated from the foundations. Steel or reinforced concrete beams replace the connections to the foundations, while under these, the isolating pads, or base isolators, replace the material removed. While the base isolation tends to restrict transmission of the ground motion to the building, it also keeps the building positioned properly over the foundation. Careful attention to detail is required where the building interfaces with the ground, especially at entrances, stairways and ramps, to ensure sufficient relative motion of those structural elements.

Legal issues

Buildings with historical importance have restrictions.

United Kingdom

New houses in the UK are not covered by the Sale of Goods Act. When purchasing a new house the buyer has less legal protection than when buying a new car. New houses in the UK may be covered by a NHBC guarantee but some people feel that it would be more useful to put new houses on the same legal footing as other products.

United States and Canada

In the US and Canada, many new houses are built in housing tracts, which provide homeowners a sense of "belonging" and the feeling they have "made the best use" of their money. However, these houses are sometimes built as cheaply and quickly as possible by large builders seeking to maximize profits. Many environmental health issues may be ignored or minimized in the construction of these structures. In one case in Benicia, California, a housing tract was built over an old landfill. Home buyers were never told, and only found out when some began having reactions to high levels of lead and chromium.

Identifying houses

With the growth of dense settlement, humans designed ways of identifying houses and/or parcels of land. Individual houses sometimes acquire proper names; and those names may acquire in their turn considerable emotional connotations: see for example the house of Howards End or the castle of Brideshead Revisited. A more systematic and general approach to identifying houses may use various methods of house numbering.

Animal houses

Humans often build "houses" for domestic or wild animals, often resembling smaller versions of human domiciles. Familiar animal houses built by humans include bird-houses, hen-houses/chicken-coops and doghouses (kennels); while housed agricultural animals more often live in barns and stables. However, human interest in building houses for animals does not stop at the domestic pet. People build bat-houses, nesting-sites for wild ducks and other birds, bee houses, giraffe houses, kangaroo houses, worm houses, hermit crab houses, as well as shelters for many other animals.

Shelter

A modern style house in Canberra, Australia

Forms of (relatively) simple shelter may include:

Bus stop
Camper
Chalet
Cottage
Dugout
Gazebo
Hangar
Houseboat
Hut
Lean-to
Log Cabin
Shack
Tent (see also camp)
Caravan
Umbrella
Yaodong

Houses and symbolism

Houses may express the circumstances or opinions of their builders or their inhabitants. Thus a vast and elaborate house may serve as a sign of conspicuous wealth, whereas a low-profile house built of recycled materials may indicate support of energy conservation.

Houses of particular historical significance (former residences of the famous, for example, or even just very old houses) may gain a protected status in town planning as examples of built heritage and/or of streetscape values. Commemorative plaques may mark such structures.

Home ownership provides a common measure of prosperity in economics. Contrast the importance of house-destruction, tent dwelling and house rebuilding in the wake of many natural disasters.

Peter Olshavsky's House for the Dance of Death provides a 'pataphysical variation on the house.

Heraldry

The house occurs as a rare charge in heraldry.